AI On Screen: What Movies Get Wrong (And Right)

Approach, in brief: I’ll start from a personal moment; surface three popular myths; flip them with one grounded story; simplify the tech on purpose; share hands-on takeaways; and end with where I think we’re headed together.

A Doorway Into The Dark

This began on a warm Bologna night, wheels humming over the rough cobbles and the smell of espresso still clinging to my scarf. I’d just left a tiny cinema off Via Zamboni where the projector’s soft whirr felt like a heartbeat, steady and a bit hypnotic. You’ve heard the usual lines: AI will flatten human creativity, AI in films is only about robots, and AI makes moviemaking less human. The room, with its dusty velvet seats and buttery popcorn scent, made me doubt all three—because the screen told a different story, clear as neon.

So here’s the twist I’m arguing for, and I’ll keep the science simple so it’s easy to follow: AI is widening who gets to tell stories, not shrinking it. Last July in Los Feliz, nine shorts from 25 countries—made by tiny teams—lit up the AI International Film Festival; one called Next Stop Paris had the intimacy of a whispered song and the punch of a drumline. Meanwhile, Netflix used AI on El Eternauta to craft a collapsing-building scene “ten times faster” and cheaper, and Ted Sarandos called AI “a tremendous opportunity” to help creators make better work—those are practical gains you can feel in the pace and texture of production, not sci-fi dreams . The takeaway, as crisp as the snap of a clapperboard: access expands when tools speed up time.

The Stories We Carry (A Short History, Simplified)

If you close your eyes you can still hear the mechanical clatter of Metropolis—all gears and steam—where a robot named Maria mirrored social fears with a cold, metallic sheen. Decades later the calm, almost breathy voice of HAL 9000 in 2001 felt like cool glass against the skin, raising a simple question: who’s really in control when the system speaks softly? From Blade Runner’s rain-slick streets to Terminator’s steel-toed dread, then into The Matrix’s green-tinted hum, our senses learned to read AI as mood as much as machine. By Her and Ex Machina, it was the tremor in a voice, the curve of light on a cheek—our anxieties and hopes braided into the glow of the frame . Tomorrow’s films will keep re-tuning that mood, a bit warmer, a bit stranger.

What AI Already Does On Set (The Human Bit)

Let’s be real: you’ve already seen de-aging shimmer across faces—Robert De Niro in The Irishman—and you’ve felt the eerie smoothness of voice and face regeneration, the way silk feels against your fingers. Big-canvas franchises lean on visual effects that blend like fog into city lights, while the ethics get prickly: Peter Cushing “returned” in Rogue One, and a 2024 legal case pushed the question of posthumous image rights into a real courtroom, with the air as dry as paper and stakes that felt heavy in the chest . On the creator side, tools like Runway, Sora, Pika, and Kaiber spin scenes from text; Descript and Wisecut clean edits with a click; ChatGPT and Sudowrite help map dialogue and beats—the keyboard’s soft tapping becomes a kind of percussion for small teams working late . The future here smells like hot laptop fans and fresh coffee: scrappy, accessible, and—yes—still human.

A Single Story That Flips The Script

I remember watching a clip from Next Stop Paris on my phone, the tinny speaker barely holding the hush of a train car as two strangers lock eyes. The scene felt handmade, like textured paper between your fingers, yet it rode on AI scaffolding the way a bike uses a smooth curb to glide. Pair that with the El Eternauta stat—AI finishing a complex collapse shot roughly 10× faster—and you get a simple, stubborn fact: time saved becomes time spent on care, rehearsal, or another take that breathes . That’s not less human; it’s more rehearsal sweat, more dusty rehearsal rooms, more space for heart.

Practical Moves You Can Make (No Hype, Just Doing)

If you’re a filmmaker, treat AI like a sketchbook that never runs out of pages; spin a previz in Runway or Sora, then bring it to set and listen for the rustle of jackets and the shuffle of feet as actors make it real . Commit—on paper—to consent and credits whenever you touch someone’s likeness or voice; the smell of printer ink and the weight of a signed page will remind you where the line sits, especially as cases like Cushing’s keep the air charged . If you’re a viewer, ask yourself—right there in the buttery glow of the theatre—whether the tech served the story; your gut usually knows within three breaths.

So, what exactly is it? It’s not magic; it’s pattern-finding maths helping with planning (pre-visualisation), timing (shot planning), and polish (visual effects). I’m simplifying the gnarly bits so they’re friendly, because the point isn’t the algorithm—it’s the moment the audience goes quiet and you can hear the seat springs creak. Keep that sound in mind as you experiment; it’s the barometer that matters next.

A Bologna Note (And A Wheelchair’s View)

From my chair, camera height is a little lower, so faces loom larger and ceilings matter; I notice the soft grit of pavement, the cool draft under theatre doors, the way neon puddles on rain. As President of Free Astroscience here in Bologna, I’ve seen student filmmakers stitch AI tests into short docs about the night sky, their fingers smudged with pizza flour and graphite. When access improves, voices multiply—that’s what I’m betting on, rather than a tidy dystopia that smells like cold metal. Next season, we’re planning screenings where you can feel the debate in the room like bass through the floorboards—come ready to question and to build.

Looking Forward

Cinema has always been a mirror, and AI is just another polish on the glass. The trick is to keep our fingerprints on it—to leave the smudge of a real hand, the warmth of breath, the creak of wood underfoot—while being honest about rights, pay, and credit, which are as tangible as ticket stubs in your pocket . If we do that, the next decade won’t smell like fear; it’ll smell like fresh paint and new seats in small theatres finding their crowd. And that, friend, is a future I’d quite like to roll into.